Hydrological Assessment of Experimental Behaviors for Different Drainage Methods in Sports Fields

Sports fields are highly functional places for economic and social purposes nowadays. Effects of various climate conditions on sports fields are very crucial in terms of playability, the health of the players, and the pleasure of spectators. This study aims to evaluate drainage behaviors of different sports field drainage techniques considering hydrological aspects. For this purpose, 40 experiments were carried out. In the experiments, a rainfall simulator (RS) was used to create different storms that included four different design hyetographs with various rainfall intensities and six different constant rainfall intensities. The pipe drain (PD), suspended water table (SWT), sand groove (SG), and slit drain (SD) were also investigated as drainage techniques that are the most commonly known and suggested in the literature. Drain outflows were obtained and drawn with respect to the experiment time for each storm and constant rainfall condition. S hydrographs were consecutively created for the increasing value of the constant rainfall intensities. The hydrograph parameters that are the time to start to drain, maximum outflow, time to reach maximum outflow, and infiltration rate were also evaluated for PD, SWT, SG, and SD. It is clearly stated that the maximum drainage outflow of the SD was greater. The hyetographs had more distinctive effects on the shape of the drainage outflow hydrographs for the PD and SWT. The rainfall intensities were not separately the cause of surface ponding for each drainage method in this study. For 90 mmh-1 and lower rainfall intensities, three drainage methods demonstrated similar drainage behaviors except for SD. The subsequent greater rainfall intensities induced different maximum drain outflows for each drainage technique. Furthermore, the SD had the maximum average outflows in every constant rainfall intensity. As a result, under the specific conditions, which are a nonweary surface, high level sanded rootzone, and good construction, the suggested four drainage systems demonstrated similar hydrologic behaviors even if some hydrograph parameters were slightly different.